Planning The Sweet Escape…

I always wondered why families did it.  Why do moms take their sick kids out when they should be at home recovering?  Shouldn’t they let them recover in the comfort of their own home? 

Well, now I know.  Two months of near-constant sickness and now I get why sometimes you just have to push through it.  I have been miserable.  I was at the point where I was depressed and crying every. single. day.  The long cold winter days, ridiculous snow storms in March, and gloomy skies have not helped.  Oh, and the hormones. Hormones don’t help.

I got to the point where I pretty much stopped posting my blogs publicly.  I have several private and “Draft” posts, but they were just too emotional negative to post.  Not to mention, I was constantly crying to my husband.  “I NEED something more,” I told him.  I needed to feel like something more than a puke-cleaning, diarreah diaper-changing, snot-wiping, laundry-folding, cooking housewife.  I just felt lost in the midst of it all.  All the while, my husband was getting praises left and right for all the wonderful things he was doing for the company.  Eventually, I even got jealous.  I needed to hear that what I was doing was important.  Instead, I heard my kids complaining about how I’d failed them (or their expectations at least!) in some way or another.   

So a couple weekends ago I had my emotional breakdown.  I knew I was depressed.  I knew I was tired of the way things were going.  I knew that I left my comfortable life in SC for what?  This?  Everything I’d built, the friendships, the ministries, the home we had, I left for miserable coldness and sickness and loneliness.  Sure we found a great church here, but their ministry needs are not the same as the ones the last church had – the needs I felt capable of contributing towards.  And the ministry Scott and I have been called to do since the day God brought us together, well, that was put on hold too, because we were told we’d probably be moving again.  I remember telling my mom that I didn’t even want to tell my doctor about my depression because I was not going to take any meds during my pregnancy!  She assured me that my doctor wouldn’t put me on meds during my pregnancy.

My husband, however, was wonderful enough that weekend I broke down to skip his monthly poker night with the guys to take me out and spend time with me.  I SO needed that.  Lately I’ve felt like I’ve been having to step aside for everything else going on in our lives.  There’s always something more important.  And that week was the worst because I knew that the weekend was filled with plans and even the weeknights when I tried to plan at-home date nights where the kids went to bed early, my plans were crushed each night with the reality that we’d already made plans for each week night too!  I felt defeated, and I needed for us to invest more time in our marriage!

So Scott skipped poker night and took me shopping for a dress for the next night’s event - Founder’s Day.  Keep in mind I’m needing Maternity clothes by now, so trying to find a “dressy” maternity dress anywhere in the mall was quite the challenge.  But we did it!  And then he took me out to dinner.  Of course, Madison was with us the entire time, since we didn’t have a babysitter! 

The rest of the weekend went mostly well with Founder’s Day Saturday night and then Sunday, actually hiring a babysitter (for the first time since we’ve moved to Ohio) and going on an afternoon date with Scott.  We went to the movies and watched 10,000 B.C. and then headed to Wal-Mart where suddenly Scott was getting on my nerves more than ever!  It didn’t take much longer before I insisted we leave and we headed straight for the Urgent Care Clinic 30 minutes before they closed.  That’s right.  He dropped me off and went home to pay the babysitter and let her go home while I waited to be seen for my painful Urinary Tract Infection.  No wonder why I was making so many trips to the bathroom during the movie!  No wonder why I wanted to ring my husband’s neck for no apparent reason!  Good thing I went because by the time I went in to give them my sample I was bleeding!  Ouch.

Anyway, I figured the way we’ve been getting sick every single week that this must be this week’s thing, right?   It was my turn to feel sick.  Wrong.  Monday night, Madison woke up puking.  I ended up “sleeping” with her in the guest bed in her room that night because she was up puking from about 10:30 until 2 – 3:30 ish.  Have you ever tried to get an 18 month old to puke in a trash can?  Impossible.  So with piles of blankets, towels and sheets on the floor, we finally slept after about 3:30 a.m.  The next day she seemed clingy but mostly better, but that night, she puked one more time.  Weak stomach, right?

I figured she might have just had a rough night, and we proceeded with the week getting ready to go on a trip.  Because when I had my emotional breakdown Scott suggested we actually get away for Spring Break.  At first I told him I didn’t even want to think about it, but after thinking about it overnight, I thought it might be the best thing for us.  Afterall, this will probably be the last trip we take for a while since this baby is going to be born in the summer!

So, I spent the rest of the week getting ready.  I did loads and loads of laundry every day so that I could be completely caught up and then began packing our bags Thursday.  My goal was to get it all done before my sister-in-law, Tina, got here, because she and her husband and kids were able to come down for the weekend.  We hadn’t seen them in 10 months!  So needless to say, we were all excited about that and I didn’t want to spend any time packing when I could be hanging out with family.  So Thursday, I stuck my last load in the washer, got it clean and ready to dry, when what happens?  The dryer stopped working.  ARGH!  But hey, at least I got nearly every piece of laundry in the house washed, right? 

Thursday night Tina and the gang get here and I am up in their room talking when I get some great news.  Joshua just puked all over his bed and floor.  Ohhhh noooooooooo!  I was just sure that Madison had a sensitive stomach.  But no.  Joshua was up most of the night puking his poor little guts out.  So I stayed up with him until about 3:30 before he stopped.  Oh, and the laundry?  I had some dirty laundry now!

So the next day, he’s still not feeling 100% but at least he only puked a couple more times.  (Thankfully while Tina and I were shopping for Easter candy! heh heh)  I was tired, but I soooooooooo enjoyed hanging out with Tina and seeing the kids again.  Things weren’t going as planned (we’d originally planned on taking them out to a couple fun places), but at least we got to see them!  And Tina was a good sport about the whole thing.  She said she would have come no matter what our kids had.  I just hope that she didn’t end up regretting that decision this week!

So, anyway, we were hanging out that evening in the living room thinking about how Joshua was actually going to get some sleep that night, when Kelly woke up, “Moooom, I don’t feel good.”  Well, she was being so dramatic, we really thought she just wanted to stay up.  But sure enough, she ended up puking too.  By 2:30 the next morning, I woke Scott up.  “Can you please get up with her just this once?  I just can’t do this anymore.  I need one break!”  I’d been around so much puke that I was afraid I was going to puke if I had to smell it, hear it, or clean it one more time.  So Scott got up with her and was awesome enough to stay up until 6:30, comforting his little girl as she puked her guts out.  See?  I told you he is awesome!

By Sunday, the kids seemed to be mostly better.  Tina threw together an egg-dying table while Uncle James hid plastic Easter Eggs out front.  I remember thinking about how my kids would have had to have waited if it hadn’t been for her because I was just so tired!  I don’t know how she does it.  She’s like the Energizer Bunny!  So the kids did their Easter Egg hunt and then it was time for them to head home. 

I knew my kids weren’t 100% and probably could have benefited from recovering completely in the comfort of their own home, but I also knew that if we didn’t go on our planned trip, we’d probably regret it.  They were still feeling a little weak, but we decided, even though we were tired, that we were going to head out later that night.  So…that’s what we did.  It was time to just push through and not let all the sickness we’ve been plagued with the last couple months defeat us.  And let me tell you, we weren’t sure if we made the right decision or not!

 To be continued…